Dr. Va­nes­sa Patrick-​Ralhan from Uni­ver­si­ty of Hous­ton (US) pre­sen­ted her work on In­clu­si­ve De­sign Trans­for­ma­ti­on in our Mar­ke­ting Re­se­arch Se­mi­nar.

In­clu­si­ve pro­duct de­sign is an ap­proach to pro­duct de­sign which takes into ac­count the needs of di­ver­se groups of con­su­mers.  It goes bey­ond mere com­pli­an­ce with ac­ces­si­bi­li­ty laws, which so­me­times means only gi­ving con­su­mers the abi­li­ty to use a pro­duct in a li­mi­ted way.  Firms who prac­ti­ce in­clu­si­ve pro­duct de­sign take the per­spec­ti­ve of the edge user, a con­su­mer who cur­r­ent­ly does not even con­sider using a pro­duct be­cau­se they are en­ti­re­ly ex­clu­ded from its use.  An examp­le of a pro­duct de­ve­lo­ped in this way is Mi­cro­soft’s Ad­ap­ti­ve Con­trol­ler.  It al­lows video gamers to con­trol their video game play th­rough a va­rie­ty of dif­fe­rent means, in­clu­ding con­trols ac­ti­va­ted with the head or feet.  This ac­com­mo­da­tes video gamers who were pre­vious­ly li­mi­ted or com­ple­te­ly ex­clu­ded by stan­dard con­trol­lers.  Pro­ducts de­ve­lo­ped with such edge users in mind often find an ap­p­li­ca­ti­on by a much wider mar­ket later so there is a busi­ness case to be made for the use of in­clu­si­ve pro­duct de­sign.

Dr. Patrick-​Ralhan’s re­se­arch fo­cu­ses on the de­ve­lo­p­ment of a frame­work which will allow firms to adopt a cul­tu­re of in­clu­si­ve pro­duct de­sign.  It in­vol­ves in­ter­views with many dif­fe­rent prac­ti­tio­ners of in­clu­si­ve de­sign and high­lights the op­por­tu­nities and pro­blems as­so­cia­ted with the­re­with.  Thank you for your visit Dr. Patrick-​Ralhan.